Sunday, August 2, 2015

New Yorkers are watching the deteriorating fiscal situation in Puerto Rico with deep concern.For many New Yorkers, the Puerto Rican debt crisis is not a distant,
abstract matter of fiscal planning and bond payments. It is about the
real lives of mothers, fathers, siblings, friends and neighbors, both on
the island and here at home.Puerto Rico and New York have long had a close, almost familial
relationship. Nearly 1 in 10 New York City residents is Puerto Rican or
of Puerto Rican descent. The fiscal crisis there is deeply personal for
the people of New York.That is why it is so important for
New Yorkers to weigh in to make sure that the federal government’s
financial decisions over the next few months balance the needs of Puerto
Ricans and their families with the commonwealth’s need for long-term
fiscal help.The critical step is to end an exclusion that prevents Puerto Rico
from doing what all state governments can do when faced with such a
crisis. Congress should immediately grant Puerto Rico the same rights as
states to allow distressed government entities to declare Chapter 9
bankruptcy and restructure their debts.Puerto Rico’s unequal status when it comes to bankruptcy protection
has already led to the closing of more than 100 schools and residents
fleeing to the mainland. Bankruptcy protections could forestall some of
the worst effects of the spiraling fiscal crisis.The simple threat of bankruptcy itself may help Puerto Rico weather
the crisis by forcing all parties back to the negotiating table to stave
off bankruptcy. New Yorkers know this from our own experience because
it worked for us in the 1970s.When New York City was on the brink of declaring bankruptcy in 1975,
it was, in the words of Richard Ravitch, who was named chairman of the
state Urban Development Corporation that year, “the threat of bankruptcy
that got everybody to do things that in the beginning of this process
they swore they wouldn’t do.”When bankruptcy—and the reduced creditor payouts that come with
it—suddenly becomes a very real possibility, local officials and
creditors work harder on compromises to find a solution short of
bankruptcy that could be agreeable to all parties.During the 1970s fiscal crisis, New York City faced levels of debt
that were unprecedented at the time. City officials had used all the
accounting tools at their disposal to keep the city afloat.By April 1975, the city had to take
out a three-day loan just to cover payroll. By October of that year,
Mayor Abraham Beame had quietly drafted a petition that would have
declared the city in default.While that petition was never invoked, the very real threat of
default—and the cascade of challenges that would surely follow—brought
city and state officials, business leaders, unions and others to the
table to hammer out a sustainable solution.That solution was not exactly what any side wanted. It required
difficult compromises from everyone at the table. But eventually, the
threat of bankruptcy was enough to help the city steady its finances and
make it through the crisis.As Stephen Berger, the head of the state’s Emergency Financial
Control Board at the time, recalled years later, “All the stuff we did
was to keep the kid from drowning.”We need to make sure that Puerto Rico is saved from drowning now so
that local officials have the time and space they need to craft a
long-term solution to the debt crisis.Congress should move swiftly to end Puerto Rico’s unequal legal
status and give it the tools it needs—including bankruptcy power—to
bring everyone to the table and solve this crisis.Eric Schneiderman is the attorney general of New York.

Saturday, August 1, 2015

New currency law—part of H.R. bill 2847—now in effect. Could make situation worse

07.12.2015 BY Mike Palmer, Stansberry Research

No one believed Porter Stansberry seven years ago.
As head of one of America’s largest independent financial research
firms, Mr. Stansberry’s work back in 2008 led him to a bold, but
worrisome, conclusion:
That the world’s largest mortgage bankers–Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac,
which at the time were responsible for nearly 50% of all the mortgages
in America–would soon go bankrupt.

In fact, in June of 2008, while their stock prices were still trading
at well over $20 per share, Stansberry published a report to his
customers titled: “Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Are Going to Zero.”
Inside this report, Stansberry explained:
“For those of you who don’t work in the financial industry, it might
be hard for you to immediately grasp what’s so dangerous about the
extreme amount of leverage employed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Let
me explain exactly what Fannie and Freddie do and why they’re in so much
jeopardy…”
We all know what happened next.
Both agencies went bust—and if not for a bailout from the Federal Government, both would have declared bankruptcy.Barron’s—America’s second biggest financial newspaper—even
wrote a story about Mr. Stansberry’s accurate prediction short, and
called it “remarkably prescient.”
Over the years, Mr. Stansberry has made a name for himself by
accurately predicting the biggest and most important collapses in
America.
A few of the others he’s accurately identified well in advance
include: General Motors, General Growth Property (America’s biggest mall
owner), D.R. Horton (a homebuilder), and Gannett newspapers, to name
just a few.
Stansberry also predicted the recent collapse of oil and natural gas
prices as early as 2010, when he wrote a report titled: “Peak Oil is a
Flat Lie.”
Well, now Mr. Stansberry has issued another fascinating warning, about a new and looming bankruptcy.

“No one believed me years ago when I said the world’s largest mortgage bankers would soon go bankrupt.

And no one believed me when I said GM would fall apart… or that the same would happen to General Growth Properties.

But that’s exactly what happened.”

And, he says, that brings us today…Stansberry says the next big bankruptcy in America will be
even bigger than those he’s identified in the past. In fact, he says
this looming bankruptcy will threaten your way of life, whether you own
any investments related to it or not.
This collapse, says Stansberry, will change everything about our
normal way of life: where you vacation… where you send your kids or
grandkids to school… how and where you shop… the way you protect your
family and home.
I strongly encourage you to check out Mr. Stansberry’s recent write-up on this situation.

Wednesday, July 29, 2015

Mayor Bill de Blasio: Thank you so much.
Thank you. I want to thank Luis Garden Acosta for his extraordinary
leadership. I’ve known Luis now a quarter century –

Luis Garden Acosta: At least.

Mayor: – and you are one of the great progressive activists in this city. Let’s thank Luis for all he is doing.

[Applause]

We have come here today as Americans, we have
come here today as New Yorkers to stand up for Puerto Rico, to stand up
for our brothers and sisters – people who we care about so deeply
because we feel such a strong personal tie, all of us, to the island of
Puerto Rico and its people.

We know that three-and-a-half million of our
fellow citizens are right now threatened by a crisis – a crisis largely
created by mistakes of federal policy that now has to be corrected by
federal action. If the federal government doesn’t step in, it will be
abandoning three-and-a-half million Americans who are only asking for
fairness at this moment.

They are saddled with a debt they cannot pay.
They are unable – by law, unable to file for bankruptcy. And they are at
the mercy of their creditors. This is an unacceptable situation. It’s a
catch-22 if we’ve ever seen one.

And I have the honor of representing many
hundreds of thousands of Puerto Ricans here in this city, a city that
would not be as great as it is were it not for the contributions of the
Puerto Rican community, and a city that feels our connection to Puerto
Rico as part of our everyday life – the depth of the connection just
can’t be fully expressed.

So we see our brothers and sisters in trouble, and it’s our job to speak out and not leave them to fend for themselves.

There are more Puerto Ricans living in this city
than any other single place in this nation outside of Puerto Rico
itself, so it’s my obligation to stand up for them – and I know my
colleagues here feel the exact same thing.

You have leaders here – elected officials, labor
leaders, faith leaders, community leaders – all agreeing, all in common
cause that we have to give Puerto Rico the tools it needs to weather
this storm – and only the federal government can do that.

I want to thank all who are here. I want thank
Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito, who has stood up early and often
and powerfully on this issue. I want to thank Scott Stringer, our
comptroller; Tish James, our public advocate. There’s absolute
singularity of purpose among us to stand up for Puerto Rico.

I want to thank the activists – people who really worked to make sure that this issue gets to the forefront and stays there.

I want to thank Frankie Miranda of the Hispanic Federation.

I want to thank my special advisor, another friend of a quarter-century, Arnie Segarra for his good work.

And labor is represented – I particularly want to thank George Miranda, the president of the Teamsters, for joining us.

A lot of people care and we will not stop until the federal government acts.

Now, let’s be clear – it’s the federal
government’s obligation to act, because they can’t stand idly by and
watch Puerto Rico fail, especially because its circumstance has so much
to do with decisions previously made by the federal government.

There is a path to resolution.

Pass HR-870, the Puerto Rico Chapter 9 Uniformity Act.

It simply allows Puerto Rico to restructure its
debt to do what so many other governments and so many corporations have
done in their times of trouble.

If we don’t do it, Puerto Rico simply can’t get back on its feet.

We’re obligated because we as Americans believe
we’re supposed to help our fellow Americans in times of trouble – and
this is a time a trouble if ever there was one for Puerto Rico. It’s no
different than a natural disaster. We must be there for the people of
Puerto Rico.

It’s a tradition that we believe in as Americans.
It’s certainly a tradition we believe in as New Yorkers. And we know
that if Puerto Rico is allowed to fail, it will hurt this entire nation
and be a tremendous injustice to the people of Puerto Rico.

So we stand together in solidarity today and we
will keep making our voices heard to all our federal officials until
there is fairness and action for Puerto Rico.

Tuesday, July 28, 2015

My name is Maria
Maisonette. I was born in Manatí, Puerto Rico. When I was 9 years old
my family moved to New York in search of a better life. Now, I live in
East New York, Brooklyn.

When I heard that billionaire hedge
fund managers have bought up large chunks of Puerto Rican debt at
discounts, pushed the island to borrow more and are now pushing for
devastating austerity measures, I was furious.

While people face despairing levels of poverty, Hedge Funds are
swooping in to exploit this crisis for a profit. Instead of letting
Puerto Rico restructure its debt, hedge funds called Puerto Rico to
lay-off teachers and close schools. [1]

Today, NYCC members
stood alongside our City Council Speaker Melissa Mark-Viverito and
dozens of concerned citizens to call on our Federal Government to save
the people of Puerto Rico, not hedge fund managers. [2]

Austerity measures and budget cuts hurt real people. People like my
cousin who had to wait 14 hours to see a doctor because of cuts to
Medicaid. Puerto Ricans are already facing depression-levels of
unemployment, mass emigration and sky-rocketing food and electricity
prices.

We cannot let opportunistic speculative investors like
hedge funds push the island into an economic catastrophe. After decades
of suffering through economic hardship, the last thing Puerto Ricans
need is more austerity. You can keep up the pressure by letting them
know that New Yorkers are watching their every move.

Thursday, July 16, 2015

MEXICO CITY — To plot his escape from the most secure prison in Mexico, Joaquín Guzmán Loera, the drug kingpin known as El Chapo, is believed to have relied on countless little birds to whisper information into his ear and help whisk him to freedom.

Now, it appears that at least one of them was an actual bird.

Government
officials visiting Mr. Guzmán’s cell after his breakout discovered the
body of a small bird sitting in his trash can. The bird, they believe,
was used to test the air quality of the tunnel through which Mr. Guzmán
vanished — like coal miners who used canaries — according to an official
helping to coordinate the manhunt. Officials are calling the bird
“Chapito.”

It
was one of many marvels of the kingpin’s escape. The architects of his
tunnel gave it lighting, a motorcycle on rails to transport the
displaced earth and oxygen tanks. It was built high enough so that Mr.
Guzmán, whose nickname means “Shorty,” could stand.

Wednesday, July 15, 2015

ISIS Confused by Trump's Hotel Analogies

The
article below is satire. Andy Borowitz is an American comedian and New
York Times-bestselling author who satirizes the news for his column,
"The Borowitz Report."

spokesman for ISIS said on Tuesday that its leaders were “genuinely
confused” by the abundant hotel analogies in Presidential candidate
Donald Trump’s announcement speech, acknowledging that they were having a
difficult time understanding how his colorful anecdotes about running a
hotel empire translated into a strategy to defeat the terror group.

In a prepared statement, the ISIS spokesman said that
Trump’s pronouncements about such hotel-industry concerns as
air-conditioning and renting the proper-sized ballroom were creating
confusion within ISIS, as the group’s leaders struggled to determine how
any of the examples applied to them.

“We’re having a very hard time making sense of the
speech,” the ISIS spokesman said. “He talked about defeating us, but it
seemed like what he was saying was pretty specific to hotels.”

Minutes after the statement was released, Trump
responded that the fact that he had confused ISIS “means I’m already
winning the war against it.”

“In every one of my hotels, you’ve got elevators,” Trump said. “Some of them go up, some of them go down. ISIS is going down.”